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I knew exactly how she felt

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Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#201

Post by ahoyhere »

petercooper wrote: post #99
noonespecial wrote: post #2

I'm not sure the author quite understood the seeing Star Wars thing was a super low bar fitness test. Once long ago my new wife asked me why geeks always wear tshirts with obscure references that no one gets. I was slightly put out by the question until I figured it out. They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield.

I've not seen Star Wars . Well, I tried to but fell asleep 10 minutes in. Oddly, I'm not feeling like an odd one out here, even so :-)

Star Wars is really, really stupid. Also boring. People have an obsession with it because it hit them at the age when they were too young to realize how it's about as intellectually challenging as My Little Ponies in Space. They saw LASERS! and SPACE SHIPS! and EVIL PEOPLE! as 9-year-olds and it embedded in their minds as "cooler than cool." The same way that some adults have a huge nostalgia-on for He-Man or Gem and the Holograms. Or Dirty Dancing. Or JTT. Bleah!

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#202

Post by lotharbot »

yew wrote: post #142
lotharbot wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refused to watch Star Wars as a kid, because people kept telling me that if I was a nerd I had to watch it. I considered it a protest against their definition of "nerd". I did finally watch the original trilogy after I was married. It's OK I guess...

I've decided to protest against protesting against definitions, on the grounds that they're words and protesting against them will redefine them to something that someone else will protest against, ad infinitum, and I don't want to die from a stack overflow ;)

I wasn't quite that clever when I was in elementary school.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#203

Post by ahoyhere »

s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

How is "Those girls don't have interests like mine!" alienating anyone?

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#204

Post by AlexandrB »

philwelch wrote: post #160
AlexandrB wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody cares that there are no female garbage collectors or miners Just like nobody cares that there are very-few/no male prostitutes or strippers. The underclass you speak of is split along gender lines too - unfortunately.

Prostitution and stripping can be very lucrative professions.

So can mining.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#205

Post by shardling »

philwelch wrote: post #200
eightpersimmons wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure what seems ridiculous to you. In these instances, the female bullies are acting out misogynistic discourses. Can you clarify what your sticking point is?

And what do you call it when boys bully each other to enforce arbitrary social norms? Because I don't see a substantial difference between the two cases.

If you accept that our society suppresses women, it's pretty obvious what the difference is. One type of behavior directly reinforces the status quo, the other doesn't.[1]

And if you want to talk about societal problems, that's pretty bloody important! Yeah, both types of bullying feel just as shitty to the individual, but the broader ramifications are definitely different. Nothing is isolated.

If you disagree with the fundamental premise (society is sexist) that's a whole other issue, but you should be at least able to see why others see a distinction.

1. Keeping in mind that you seem to want to compare arbitrary bullying to the more specific type persimmons references.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#206

Post by s_baby »

vacri wrote: post #183
s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

Feminist discourse is usually 1 dimensional. No, it's not. It really, really isn't. You only notice the stuff that mentions female-victim/male-perp because you don't really care enough about the issue to notice anything further. There is heaps of feminist discourse on women judging women and limiting their options by doing so, the topic of this article. And there are plenty of complex narratives rather than black and…

A) Those edge cases you speak of are not part of the dominant discourse. When woman on woman sexism is approached in the dominant discourse it's in the form of...

>In the few cases where other women are shown as the problem they are framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior.

B) You're making some big assumptions about my awareness of sociology.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#207

Post by philwelch »

shardling wrote: post #205
philwelch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you call it when boys bully each other to enforce arbitrary social norms? Because I don't see a substantial difference between the two cases.

If you accept that our society suppresses women, it's pretty obvious what the difference is. One type of behavior directly reinforces the status quo, the other doesn't.[1] And if you want to talk about societal problems, that's pretty bloody important! Yeah, both types of bullying feel just as shitty to the individual, but the broader ramifications are definitely different. Nothing is isolated. If you disagree with t…

It still doesn't follow from the premise that "society suppresses women to the benefit of men" that "any time an individual woman is suppressed, it is to the benefit of men". How do men even benefit from social taboos enforced my women against other women being geeky, or for that matter, slutty? That's probably the opposite of what would benefit men.

Society is more complicated than that. There are more forces swirling around than patriarchy. Any insular group will eventually enforce arbitrary social norms on each other, and since people tend to socialize with those of the same sex, both genders form insular groups in our society.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#208

Post by s_baby »

shardling wrote: post #205
philwelch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you call it when boys bully each other to enforce arbitrary social norms? Because I don't see a substantial difference between the two cases.

If you accept that our society suppresses women, it's pretty obvious what the difference is. One type of behavior directly reinforces the status quo, the other doesn't.[1] And if you want to talk about societal problems, that's pretty bloody important! Yeah, both types of bullying feel just as shitty to the individual, but the broader ramifications are definitely different. Nothing is isolated. If you disagree with t…

There is no difference. Both are patriarchal discourses if that's the lense you choose to use.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#209

Post by rhizome »

pekk wrote: post #109
xyzzy123 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably why, when building a skyscraper, modern construction practices dictate that all the subcontractors just "do their own thing" and sort out with each other when it's OK to put in walls, pipes, wiring and structural alterations. The N^2 communication overhead is OK, because PMs are just useless overhead anyway. I heard sometimes building projects fail because the PM only understood what was supposed to b…

That would be great if software were exactly analogous to building skyscrapers, and developers were idiot construction workers who do nothing but put the sheetrock and nails where they are asked. (Note: I am not saying that construction workers are idiots, I am saying that programmers are not idiot-construction-workers.) There is not just one way to organize a project.

Code is the sheetrock and nails of software business.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#210

Post by yzhengyu »

chris_mahan wrote: post #174
overgryphon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's laziness. Instead of recognizing that everyone got where they are now by a different path where they learned different things and appreciating the diversity of knowledge that creates, it's so much easier to say, you should have known that.

It's laziness, and it's also lack of empathy.

I have observed that it is far easier to naturally empathise with one who has many similarities to you rather than empathise with another who is radically different from you.

The latter actually requires conscious effort.

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